


shower beer

by van1lla_v1lla1n



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexual Tom Wambsgans, Boss/Employee Relationship, Externalized homophobia, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Smut, Tom-typical mopey angst, canon-compliant overuse of the word fuck, kind of, mostly implied smut, this got really soft?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26670817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n/pseuds/van1lla_v1lla1n
Summary: Mid-s. 2, ep. 10.Shiv ditched him after he backed out of the threesome, and Tom feels like shit. He finds himself, inexplicably, in Greg's room.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Comments: 13
Kudos: 64





	shower beer

After Shiv left, Tom just sat on their bed for a while, feeling guilty and ashamed of his lack of libido and more than anything just worried. Apparently the whole family thought it was him who should take the fall for the Cruises cover-up. Even Shiv. Even his own fucking wife.

How was he supposed to get it up for her when she sided with literally everyone else over him? When the only way she’d fuck him, apparently, was if there was someone else involved or if she’d just metaphorically shit on him?

He was almost certain now they’d set him up to take the brunt of the shit at the hearings. And maybe he’d be okay with that, if someone had just told him, had given even the slightest hint that he needed to be ready.

He changed back into shorts and wandered around the boat, thinking maybe, if no one else was out, he’d swim for a while—just float, let the water surround him and block out everything else. It’d be nice to have a human to do that, wouldn’t it?

He nodded and smiled his overenthusiastic PR smile at Kendall and Naomi by the pool, calling that mission off. And then he was at Greg’s door, which Greg didn’t answer, but which was unlocked. And then Tom was just . . . inside Greg’s room.

No Greg in sight, but he heard the shower. He found beers in a little fridge in there, took two, and before he could second-guess himself, he was stripping off his shirt and pulling the shower door open.

“What the fuck, man?” Greg abruptly turned his back to the shower door, hands over his face.

“Wow, buddy, look at you!” Tom said.

“Dude, you can’t just, like, come into people’s rooms while they’re showering.”

“Chill out, Greg. I just want to hang out, you know? Shiv ditched me, it’s the night before our imminent demise, let’s have a shower beer.”

“I mean, I guess? Can you not, like, look at my junk, though?”

“You think I’m here to ogle your dick, Greg? Stop being a prude.”

“Jesus, Tom. Fine.” But when he turned around to take one of the beers from Tom’s hand, he was blushing furiously, his neck and chest all blotchy red.

The shower was big, and they didn’t even have to stand that close together. Just like two dudes standing around at a bar, Tom thought. Except that one of them was naked, and the other was having to work unexpectedly hard to keep his eyes on his friend’s face.

They stood sipping their beers for a minute, glancing at each other almost clandestinely, until Greg said, “You really think it’ll be us tomorrow?”

And Tom said, “Sure seems like it, right? I mean they even had a fucking name for us. ‘Tom sundae with Greg sprinkles’? And honestly I feel like they set me up for this from the beginning, with the hearings. I was just the dead cat in the fucking sandwich.”

“At least you’re the meat, man. I’m just sprinkles. Greg fucking Sprinkles? So expendable it almost isn’t even, like, worth the effort.”

“I mean, you’ve kind of been nothing the whole time, right? You knew that.”

“I didn’t, actually, but thank you, Tom. Wow. Are you almost done with your beer? Because—”

“Oh, come on, Greg. You’ve worked your way up.” Tom punched his bare shoulder and his knuckles burned. He swallowed. “It took some help, mostly from me, but you’ve climbed the ladder from very nothing to kind-of-less nothing a lot faster than most people in your position.”

Greg smiled at the praise, looking at his feet in that bashful way, trying to hide it.

“Greg. If it is us, though, I’m sorry about making you sign for those boxes. I’m sorry for dragging you down with me. I was obviously meant to be the scapegoat here.” He took a long last drink of his beer, set the empty bottle on a shelf, leaned his head back against the wall. “Maybe I should’ve just accepted that from the beginning.”

“Dude, Tom, no—I mean, like, obviously I didn’t want to get dragged down or whatever, but I kinda fucked you over too, right? Saving those papers?”

“Sure. It was a good play on your part, I guess. Very conniving.” Tom tried out his for-Greg-only smile, but it was only halfheartedly vicious. “Anyway. If it is us tomorrow, I’ll try to make sure nothing happens to you.”

Greg also failed to smile at that, mumbling a little but not really saying anything. Tom stepped closer to him, having to crane his neck a little to look up into Greg’s face. “I will, Greg. I know that’s such a fucking Roy-power-move thing to say—‘I’ll take care of you’—but I mean it.”

“Sure, Tom.”

“Hey, who covered your giant guilty ass in Boar on the Floor? Huh? That was me, remember? I could’ve fucked you over in a second.” He really did mean it, and he understood why Greg was avoiding his gaze like this, but he wished it didn’t sting so much. Tom stared at his hand, which had wrapped loosely around Greg’s elbow sometime during one of those overly earnest monologues.

“I know, I know. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I just want you to trust me.”

“Why, though? I feel like when rich people want you to trust them, it’s just so they can, like, manipulate you easier.”

“Don’t be so cynical, Greg. I mean, maybe. But I also just wish you trusted me. I don’t know.” Tom felt this thread of humiliation in his chest—that he had one friend, basically, and even that one maybe-friend he’d kind of fucked over. One person he felt good about spending time with, and he wasn’t even sure why, or if it was really mutual. Maybe Greg didn’t really like him at all; maybe he just didn’t want to get fired.

It was too much, really—this humiliation and the humiliation of the hearings and the “Tom sundae” bullshit and the threesome he’d wanted so bad to want. Maybe Greg _didn’t_ really like him, but he was still here, right? And so Tom leaned forward until his forehead rested on Greg’s bare chest, closing his eyes so he wasn’t staring straight down at his dick.

Greg just said, “Um,” and Tom felt a warm hand and cool glass on his shoulder. “You, uh, you alright, man?”

“Do you even like me, Greg?”

“Yeah, man. You’re, like, one of my best friends.” Tom felt Greg’s other hand on his back, tilted his head up until his nose smashed against Greg’s sternum, pressing his mouth to the skin there. _Not a kiss_ , Tom told himself, _just . . . resting._

“Would you fuck me? If I asked you to?” he heard himself say. Greg’s hand flinched on his shoulder.

“Um? Are you fucking with me?”

Tom pulled away abruptly, feeling his face contort into some affronted sneer. “Of course I’m fucking with you! Jesus, Greg.” And then he didn’t know what else to say—because that was a lie, wasn’t it? He _had_ meant it. Maybe he’d really meant it the first time he asked, too, months ago, about kissing him. Greg looked like he didn’t believe him either. “I don’t know, Greg. I guess . . . No? I don’t think so.” And he leaned back in, hid his face in Greg’s chest, a muttered _Fuck_ muffled against his skin under the water. When had Greg infected him with this bullshit inability to speak directly?

Tom stood there for maybe an hour, he thought, just waiting for Greg to say something. And just as he was taking a deep breath to turn away he felt Greg’s arms wrap around his shoulders.

“Then yes? I guess? If you, like, asked me to?” He felt Greg shift a little, shuffling his feet. “Are you asking me to?”

Tom lost his breath then, and his voice was too-soft and shaky when he answered. “I think so.”

And then Greg was pulling away, stepping past him, saying, “Okay, hold on, I’m just going to get some—” But Tom grabbed his bicep, yanked him back toward him.

“Jesus, Greg, would you fucking slow down? At least romance me a little. Fuck.” Tom scrubbed his face, blushing, and when he looked up Greg still looked surprised and even more confused.

“Sorry,” Greg said, fidgeting.

And Tom was almost furious with himself, set his forehead gently against the wall of the shower when really he wanted to bang it hard enough to bruise. “No, I—fuck, Greg. Goddammit.” He turned around, took Greg’s hand, put it over his face. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. What is this? What are we doing?”

Greg tried to take his hand off of Tom’s face, but Tom wouldn’t let go of his wrist, so he just used that leverage to pull Tom back into him and put his other arm around his shoulders. “It’s alright, man. Just don’t worry. We don’t even have to do anything. I just wanted to, like, be ready? If you really wanted to?”

Tom slid his hands around to Greg’s back, pulled away just enough to look up at him, and Greg held the side of his face, looking only a little quizzical. Tom closed his eyes when he felt Greg’s thumb brush over his mouth, then felt his tongue trace his scar, which was _hot_ , but also—

“Did you just lick me?”

“Yeah—I mean, yeah, I just, uh, I’ve always wanted to do that.” The last thing Tom heard was _always wanted_ , though—that someone, that _Greg_ , had _always wanted_ anything from him other than to use him as a shit receptacle was such a revelation that he basically stopped listening after that. And then he was pressing Greg backward, grabbing his neck, and kissing him in the unbridled, almost vicious way he’d imagined he’d do, if he allowed himself to acknowledge that he had in fact imagined this, in the first place.

The kiss was fucking feral—he’d never kissed Shiv this way, and he really didn’t want to be thinking about Shiv right now but he couldn’t help it. He just couldn’t imagine her letting him do this; if she felt he was getting too pushy or needy, she tended just to turn off. But Greg seemed just as needy as he did, licking him like that and holding onto him with those massive hands and pressing a bare thigh up between his legs.

“You have nice tits, Greg,” he said after a while, when they were catching their breath. He’d been running his hands all over Greg’s chest, tweaking his nipples, while Greg groaned into his mouth.

“I, uh, thank you?” Greg’s hands fidgeted on his neck. “Is it weird to call them ‘tits,’ though?”

“No!” Tom scoffed. “It’s not weird, Greg. They’re _tits_. What do you want me to call them, your ‘firm pecs’ or some shit? Come on.”

It felt good to shit-talk Greg a little, when he’d made himself so vulnerable, and Greg was smirking—after all it’d really been a compliment, right? Just a compliment wrapped in shit-talk cellophane. And Greg did have nice tits. And a nice cock, which Tom admitted to himself once he quit trying to avoid it. Nice to touch. Nice to have in his mouth. You know.

Later, when they’d dried off and warmed each other back up in bed, Tom looked up into Greg’s face while Greg slicked both of them up with lube, while he worked Tom open with his fingers. Greg was attentive and gentle but so assertive like this, like for once he was acting like he knew what he was doing and actually _did_ know what he was doing.

It was Tom who was more out of his element here, and for once he felt okay with that; he felt comfortable letting Greg take over and make the decisions. He felt like Greg wouldn’t try to fuck him over, at least not irredeemably, like Greg could _just tell_ what he needed. Greg probably knew what to do with a dick better than Shiv ever could, especially since Tom didn’t know how to talk to her during sex anyway.

Tom was used to being subservient, in a way, as much as he hated it, as much as he knew how pathetic he often looked. But with Greg, at least right then, it felt right—like he was what Greg needed and Greg was what he needed and together they were this perfectly symbiotic tangle of desire and need and awful humiliated sameness. He held Greg close against his chest while he came, and after, while Greg lay next to him and finished him off with his hand, he looked down at him with such blatant attentive interest that Tom felt almost shy.

Tom knew he shouldn’t spend the night in Greg’s room, with the whole family on the boat, waiting and watching each other for the smallest misstep, but it felt wrong to leave Greg then, felt wrong to even think about slinking back to Shiv on some guilty midnight walk of shame. (Maybe a dawn walk of shame would be worse, but he’d deal with that later.)

They fell asleep with their long limbs tangled up almost desperately, and when Greg woke him up a few hours later, Tom wanted so badly to kiss him and just _stay_ that he could hardly bear even to look at him. So instead he just got up and got dressed in a rush.

“Don’t worry about today, buddy,” he said on his way out the door. “We’ll be fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> This might be shit, I don't know! But here it is anyway!
> 
> Comments and kudos are like little hugs and I appreciate them so much 💕
> 
> I'm on Twitter at [@van1lla_v1lla1n](https://twitter.com/van1lla_v1lla1n) if you'd like to say hiiii or dm me about tags :)


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